Recorder

Valerie Austin

Valerie Austin is a professor of history and of music at Saint Andrews University in Laurinburg, NC, where she teaches courses in European history and the World Wars.  As a musicologist and music educator her research areas include early instrumental music and 20th century American music, specifically the crossover between popular and ‘classical’ forms. With musical origins as a symphonic trumpet player, Austin specializes on the cornett and recorder.  You may have seen her name on the board of the American Recorder Society, and she notes her favorite professional group is the International Guild of Town Bands and Pipers, to whose international gatherings she regularly travels to perform.

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Annette Bauer

Annette Bauer is a recorder player and multi-instrumentalist. Born and raised in Germany, she holds a diploma in medieval and Renaissance music from the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. From 2001-2012 she called the San Francisco Bay area her home, where she studied sarode and voice in the classical North Indian tradition under Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. In 2004, she completed an M.A. degree in music from the University of California in Santa Cruz. As a freelance musician, she worked with early music ensembles all over the United States, including her own groups Cançoniér, Les Grâces, Farallon Recorder Quartet, and The Lost Mode, and as guest artist for Piffaro, Magnificat, and Texas Early Music Project, among others. From 2012-2020 she toured the world as a musician for Cirque du Soleil’s show TOTEM, performing over 2300 shows across 36 cities, 12 countries, and 4 continents. Annette is now making a new home with her partner and young daughter in Montréal, Quebec. She is currently sharing her love of music by offering online and in person music lessons in her private studio, as well as teaching online workshops for the American Recorder Society and Amherst Early Music, including an ongoing online class on early notation. Annette is the current music director of the North American Virtual Recorder Society (navrs.org), directs the annual San Francisco Early Music Society Recorder summer workshop (sfems.org), and coaches Harmonia, one of the ensembles of the Montreal Recorder Society. In the Montreal music scene, she has performed as a guest artist with Montreal-based medieval women’s ensemble Scholastica, Trio Regard Persan, Projet O of choreographer Sarah Dell’Ava, and with singer-songwriter Juulie Rousseau. In the spring of 2024, she was part of a creative residency at the Centre Des Musiciens du Monde, working on a musical duo project together with Chinese guzheng player Ran Wang, creating a program inspired by the historical silk road.

https://soundcloud.com/annettebauer
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instagram: @annettebauermusic
FB page: Annette Bauer – musician
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Phil Hollar

Phil Hollar teaches recorder in Hickory, North Carolina. He is a frequent faculty member at workshops including Mountain Collegium Early Music and Folk Music Workshop, the Atlanta Early Music Alliance Mid-Winter Workshop, and the Triangle Recorder Society Spring Early Music Workshop. Phil has extensive experience leading American Recorder Society chapter playing sessions and has been invited to lead sessions nationwide. He currently serves as a board member for the American Recorder Society where he chairs the Play the Recorder Day Task Force. Phil holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Phil Hollar’s website

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Joan Kimball

Joan Kimball is the former artistic co-director and a founding member of Piffaro, The
Renaissance Band. She has concertized with the ensemble throughout the U.S., Europe, and South America and has performed with many of the leading early music artists and
ensembles in this country. With Piffaro she has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche
Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Recordings and PARMA/Navona, and in addition can be heard on the Vanguard, Eudora and Vox Amadeus labels.

Widely known in the early music community as a teacher of recorder, early double reeds and bagpipes, she has been on faculty at early music festivals and workshops across the country, including The Madison Early Music Festival, The Early Double Reed & Sackbut Workshop, Amherst Early Music, The San Francisco Early Music Recorder and Med/Ren workshops, The Texas Toot, and Hidden Valley Early Music Workshop.

Joan has intimate knowledge and experience with early double reeds, playing both shawm and dulcian, as well as capped reeds and bagpipes. She has far too many of the latter in various sizes, pitches and volumes in her studio, and is committed to keeping them all in good working order! She makes her own reeds for all her instruments and supplies them as well for reed players across the country. One of her specialties is refurbishing whole sets of krumhorns, replacing the old plastic reeds with more authentic cane ones. In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes.

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Jody Miller, Director

Jody is director of Lauda Musicam of Atlanta and teaches private recorder lessons in the Atlanta area.  Previously, he has served on the faculty of the Atlanta Early Music Alliance Mid-Winter Workshop and has taught recorder workshops throughout the country.  Miller performs most frequently with Amethyst Baroque Ensemble, but  he is also a member of Eclectic Collective, Ritornello Baroque Ensemble, and Sol Divino.  Miller often collaborates with modern instrumentalists when performing his favorite works—contemporary chamber music for recorder.  He works closely with composer Timothy Broege and has premiered several of his compositions.  More recently, Miller performed the premier of Martha Bishop’s Dark Moods–Breakaway for recorder and percussion and Gregory Hamilton’s Ave Maria Variations for unaccompanied recorder.   Jody has performed with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, New Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera, and the Victoria Bach Festival. Jody has served as Director of Mountain Collegium since 2011.

Jody Miller’s website

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Emily O’Brien

Emily O’Brien is a native of Washington, DC where she played recorder from a young age. She studied recorder and french horn at Boston University, and recorder and Baroque flute at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, Germany. She performs in recorder ensembles and historical chamber music, as well as English Country Dance bands. As a teacher, she works with private students and ensembles in the Boston area as well as teaching at various summer workshop such as CDSS’s Early Music Week at Pinewoods and Amherst Early Music Festival. Emily’s solo album, “Fantasies for a Modern Recorder” explores the variety and possibilities over four centuries of repertoire offered by the Helder Harmonic Tenor recorder. In her spare time, she enjoys long distance cycling.

Emily O’Brien’s website

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Patricia Petersen

Pat holds an MFA in Early Music Performance from Sarah Lawrence College.  A Director Emerita of Amherst Early Music, she is a regular faculty member at that and many other weekend and week-long workshops.  Her vocal group Fortuna recorded on the Titanic label; she also conducted the Amherst Festival Choir on a recording of the music of Heinrich Isaac.  She performs on recorder and other early winds, and has appeared with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.  She has coached early music ensembles at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  An ARS certified teacher, she teaches recorder, early music, and English country dance in North Carolina and at workshops around the country, and has a passion for playing from facsimiles of early 15th-century music.  In her other musical life, she loves to harmonize on traditional tunes, and plays a mean banjo-uke.  Pat is currently working with a group of musicians and dancers to develop a retirement community for dancers, musicians, artists, and other like-minded people.

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Gwyn Roberts

Gwyn Roberts is one of America’s foremost performers on recorder and baroque flute, praised by Gramophone for her “sparkling technique, compelling musicianship, and all-around excellence.”  She is also co-founder and -director of Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra Tempesta di Mare, hailed by the Miami Herald as “the model of a top-notch period orchestra.”  Now in the 15th season of its Philadelphia Concert Series, Tempesta di Mare tours from Oregon to Prague, recently released its 10th CD on the British label Chandos, and reaches audiences in 56 countries around the world with broadcasts of live performances.

Roberts’ soloist engagements include Portland Baroque Orchestra, Recitar Cantando of Tokyo, Washington Bach Consort and the Kennedy Center. In addition to Chandos, she has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Dorian, Sony Classics, Vox, PolyGram, PGM, and Radio France. Her latest solo recordings include the Fasch Recorder Concerto in F, Bach’s Concerto in G after BWV 530, and Sonatas by Francesco Mancini.  She enjoys collaborating with living composers, recently recording James Primosch’s Sacred Songs and Meditations with the 21st Century Consort for Albany Records.

Roberts studied recorder and baroque flute at Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands with Marion Verbruggen, Leo Meilink and Marten Root. She loves teaching, with recent masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, Hartt School of Music, and Oregon Bach Festival.  She is Professor of Recorder and Baroque Flute at the Peabody Conservatory, Director of Early Music Ensembles at the University of Pennsylvania, and directs the Virtuoso Recorder Program at the Amherst Early Music Festival.

Gwyn Roberts’s website

Tempesta di Mare’s website

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Chris Rua

Copyright 2024 Rob Strong

Chris Rua performs on a wide range of instruments including recorders, oboe, flute, bagpipe, Renaissance reeds, percussion and as a vocalist. She has performed with the Quadrivium, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Libana, the Christmas Revels, Early Music New York, Piffaro, and Ex Umbris. Chris has taught at numerous Early Music and Dance workshops including Early Music Week at Pinewoods, of which she directed for three years, as well as at World Fellowship, Westminster Choir College, The Mideast Early Music Workshop and the Boston ARS.  She has played for English Country dancing from California to England, with Bare Necessities to ECD Balls and at other dance weeks including the Berea Christmas Week, Buffalo Gap and English American Week at Pinewoods. Having completed a 10 year tour with Cirque du Soleil she now lives in  Vermont teaching students and ensembles at Seven Star Arts in Sharon VT and the Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon NH. Chris’ most recent project is a live radio show called “Star Radio Hour” which she created and directs.  This old timey radio show incorporates local talent and highlights a swing band, close harmony singers, poets, storytellers and fun ads from local sponsors.

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Anne Timberlake

Anne Timberlake has performed in 34 states (North Dakotans– call me!) playing repertoire from across the last millennium. She grew up in early music, beginning her studies as part of Indiana University’s Pre-College Recorder Program, and later earned degrees in recorder performance from Oberlin Conservatory and Indiana University.  Her teachers have included Eva Legene, Alison Melville, and Han Tol.  Critics have praised Anne’s “fine technique and stylishness,” “unexpectedly rich lyricism” (Letter V), and “dazzling playing” (Chicago Classical Review).

Anne has received awards from the American Recorder Society and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, and was awarded a Fulbright Grant. With her ensemble Wayward Sisters, Anne won Early Music America’s Naxos Recording Competition, releasing a debut CD on the Naxos label in 2014.

Anne is a passionate and prolific teacher. In addition to teaching private, group, and online recorder lessons, Anne has led hundreds of recorder workshops across the United States.  Faculty engagements have included Oberlin Conservatory’s Baroque Performance Institute, Indiana University’s Pre-College Recorder Program, the San Francisco Early Music Society, the Amherst Early Music Festival, Virginia Baroque Academy, Mountain Collegium, Mideast, Pinewoods Early Music Week, and numerous American Recorder Society chapters.  Anne lives with her husband and two children in St. Louis, MO. Find Anne online at annetimberlake.com

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Barbara Weiss

A versatile and engaging musician, Barbara Weiss’ diverse musical experiences range from recording and performing ancient classical Cambodian music to directing a baroque opera company to chairing a university’s early music program.  She started out as a clarinet and piano player and learned recorder in high school. She studied recorder and shawm at Indiana University, where she had opportunities to perform Brandenburg concertos and the Telemann suite.  In addition to being the director of Recorder Society chapters in Michigan and Minneapolis, she has been on the faculty of both the Oberlin Conservatory and the Peabody Institute.  She has taught at summer workshops such as the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the Madison Early Music Festival, Mountain Collegium, and Indiana University’s Recorder Academy.  She currently lives in Asheville, NC, where she performs with Muses Delight, Pan Harmonia, and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. Her collaborations include Belladonna, the Newberry Consort, Quicksilver, Chatham Baroque, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the King’s Noyse, Apollo’s Fire, the Chicago Opera Theater, Ensemble Vermillion and Piffaro. She hs has recorded with the Dorian, Flying Fish and Harmonia Mundi labels.

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